Despite training, health-care, food, and transportation workers are poorly compliant with practices known to reduce the spread of infectious microbes, such as hand hygiene measures. For example, even the most vigorous attempts of infection control departments to increase health-care worker (e.g., nurses, physicians, and technicians) compliance with hand hygiene is limited to a sustained compliance rate of only 40%.
Health-care-associated infections are a common cause of morbidity and mortality in the United States and are among the most common adverse events in health-care. Infectious microbes that can be acquired or transmitted in a healthcare setting include: Acinetobacter baumannii; Burkholderia cepacia; chickenpox (varicella); Clostridium difficile; Clostridium sordellii; Creutzfeldt-Jakob Disease (CJD); ebola virus (viral Hemorrhagic Fever); hepatitis viruses A and B; influenzaviruses; MRSA (methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus); mumps; norovirus; streptococcal species; Pseudomonas Aeruginosa; parvovirus; poliovirus; pneumonia; rubella; SARS; S. pneumoniae; tuberculosis; VISA (vancomycin intermediate Staphylococcus aureus); and VRE (vancomycin-resistant enterococci).
Poor compliance with hand hygiene protocols in the food service (e.g., food poisoning) and transportation (e.g., airplanes, cruise ships, and trains) industries also results in significant morbidity and mortality.
New systems designed to encourage hand sanitation are needed to reduce the spread of infectious microbes in these and other public and private settings.